


Alkaline

by alcoholandregret



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: First Words Soulmate AU, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, this is really short but it was fun
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-09
Updated: 2017-07-09
Packaged: 2018-11-30 02:34:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11454186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alcoholandregret/pseuds/alcoholandregret
Summary: Nico’s words appear when he’s just barely over four, playing outside with his siblings."Hey, I'm Nolan."





	Alkaline

**Author's Note:**

> Title from [Alkaline by Timeflies](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4G8rI4Idbik)

Nico’s words appear when he’s just barely over four, playing outside with his siblings. He trips over a tree root and rubs at his elbows, teary-eyed, but the tears stop threatening to spill the moment he sees the sentence. Being as young as he is, he only really knows what soulmates are in vague concepts. He’s heard the stories of how his parents met, his grandparents, and a few of his neighbours even shared when he asked them. 

The idea of soulmates always appealed to him. They felt like real-life fairy tales. Sweet little bedtime stories with their happily ever afters.

He excitedly runs inside and shows the words to his mother, who’s smile seems a little off and he briefly wonders what he’s done wrong. She tells him to go back outside, and he hears her whisper with his father that it seems so early for his fate to be sealed like this. 

He doesn’t understand what the big deal is as he sits on his front porch. Mostly he just thinks it’s really cool, the scrawled English running down his forearm, like it’s in a rush to get somewhere.

He’s going to get a bedtime story happily ever after, too.

He shows Luca the words when he comes over to check on him.

He just laughs. “He has bad handwriting.”

Nico didn’t question it, just nodded.

It wasn’t until later that day when he finally asked about it that Luca told him what it said.

_ Hey, I’m Nolan. _

Nolan.

Apparently, he learns as he gets older, knowing your soulmate’s name is actually really a lot more uncommon than one might think. Most people will overhear their match say something before they get properly introduced, or they’ll skip formalities, or they’ll just accidentally run into each other and not even make it to exchanging names right away. Sometimes someone else will introduce them, so they don’t even need to say their names. Regardless, Nico thinks he’s pretty lucky, in a way. He doubts there’s too much room for mix-ups if he has that much to go on already, after all.

Sometimes at family events he still hears his aunts and uncles and even a couple cousins chatter about how early it happened, even though it happened over a decade prior.  _ What if there was a mistake? Really, the universe paired up a small boy with someone before he even had a real grasp on, well, anything. Can that even happen? Shouldn’t they have met by now, then? _

It’s pretty exhausting sometimes, if he’s to be completely honest. He sees where they’re coming from, in some way, though. Most people get their words around ten, some even as late as thirteen. The exceptions of course mostly lied with those that meet their soulmates before that age.

But Nico is sixteen, and still no Nolan.

He ignores his family speaking of him as if he weren’t right there and runs a thumb down the scribbled words, smiling slightly to himself. They can say what they want, but he has a good feeling about this. He’s always had a good feeling about this.

Maybe that just makes him a naive teenager, but sometimes he sits outside at night, looking up at the stars, and he can’t help but trust whatever it is that brings souls together after they’ve been separated. He’s so small compared to everything else, so who is he to question what it’s doing?

It seems like nothing more than the blink of an eye before his season with Visp ends and he finds himself drafted by Halifax in the import draft. He talks about it with his family and the Mooseheads, but really, in the end, moving to Canada wasn’t even a question. It would further his hockey career, of course, and that is one of the most important things to him, but mostly he couldn’t think of a better way to meet English-speaking Nolan than moving to North America. It just feels like the right path for him to take, like it will tie up all his loose ends.

He never stops working hard with Halifax, playing his best and constantly trying to improve his game, and it doesn’t take long for people to take notice. It doesn’t take long for him to steadily climb top North American top prospects lists.

It doesn’t take long for the articles to start.

_ Nolan or Nico? _

He knows that Nolan Patrick is the furthest thing from the only Nolan on the planet. He knows that. Honest. Still, he has a feeling. He got it the moment he saw the question posed for the first time. It only gets stronger as time goes on.

The rosters for the Top Prospects Game are announced, and Nico is told he will captain Team Orr.

He couldn’t help but ask, and the answer didn’t surprise him in the least.

Team Cherry’s captain?

Nolan Patrick.

Because, really, who else?

He stares out the window on the way to the captain’s photoshoot, unable to stop the buzzing under his skin. This is it. The words he’s had for nearly fourteen years would finally be said. He could finally hear them. Finally,  _ finally _ .

Part of him, some self-deprecating part of him, wonders if he’s gone and gotten this all wrong. It isn’t this Nolan, it’s someone else. This is too easy, too obvious. The universe is never this simple.

That part of him is very small, though, so he pushes it back into the corner of his mind it escaped from and straightens himself as he starts to get prepped for the shoot. As he walks out onto the rink where the photography crew is setting up, he’s informed that Nolan got there a little after he did, so he has some time before they actually meet.

Standing there at center ice, twirling the stick he was given in his hands, he bites at his lip. It wasn’t until then that he really realised that whatever he said in just a few moments would have been on display somewhere on Nolan for most of his life. Briefly he thinks how strange it is to be able to choose what it is your soulmate hears. That can’t happen too often.

He feels lucky. Well and truly lucky, and for more than just that reason.

He runs through a list of possible responses through his mind, tapping the stick on the ice in front of him. No matter what, none of them feel right. It’s a little annoying.

But before Nico can get properly frustrated with himself, he hears footsteps on the ice. He can’t help how genuine his smile was when he looked up and saw Nolan walking towards him. He couldn’t have made it a simply polite smile if he tried.

If the boy was put off by it, he didn’t show it.

The darker part of his brain creeps back out of its corner, whispering  _ ‘he’s not yours’ _ as Nolan comes to a stop in front of him. Nico has to fight the urge to roll his eyes at it, mentally shoving it back to where it belonged.

He offers a small wave and a friendly smile. “Hey, I’m Nolan.”

Every single thing he thought of to say in response escapes him, even the truly bad ones.

“I know.”

Nolan looks taken aback for a moment, and Nico ran a hand over his face, sighing. “Sorry for that.”

That was even worse than some of the things that he’d labelled ‘no’ and even ‘god, no’ as he thought of them.  _ I know? Really? Smooth. _

Nolan just starts to laugh, taking off his glove to reveal the neat  _ I know _ printed across the back of his left hand.

“I can’t believe  _ that’s _ what you know.”

Nico can’t help the grin that stretches its way across his entire face, rolling up his sleeve just enough to reveal the sloppy  _ Nolan _ written there. “I’ve always known.”

They stand there for a moment and just smile stupidly at each other until the photographers finally finish their set-up and begin to order them around until they were in the exact correct position.

It isn’t fun by any means, really. Not that he went into it thinking that it would be. He feels a bit like a clay doll in one of those stop motion animation movies. He can ignore it pretty easily, though, relishing in the presence of his soulmate. The buzz under his skin feels stronger than ever, and it was almost like he was completely vibrating with it.

The glances he could steal from Nolan between poses makes him think Nolan could feel it too.

Four is a little young to get your soulmark, and to some even eighteen seems too early to meet your soulmate, but standing back to back with Nolan while people bustle around behind the camera felt right. This is where he was meant to end up. Where  _ they _ were meant to end up.

It would work out just fine for the two of them, he thinks.

Later, he watches the draft lottery unfold, and with it, his future.

New Jersey and Philadelphia. One and two. 

He still doesn’t know who will go where; neither of them do, and neither of them care.

Nolan texts him a screenshot of the distance between Philly and Newark on Google maps followed by a string of heart emojis, and he responds with a series of his own.

_ Yeah _ , he thinks when Nolan offers him a hug after Shero calls his name,  _ we’ll be just fine. _

It’s not the way it often goes, but it’s his own story. His happily ever after.

**Author's Note:**

> I impulsively wrote this instead of going to sleep last night so that's why it's so short and all that stuff. Anyway I hope you like it!
> 
> you can find me on [twitter](http://www.twitter.com/alcoholnregret) and [tumblr](http://www.sidnate.tumblr.com)


End file.
